RPR Alliance makes standards progress

The Resilient Packet Ring Alliance said it made progress on an RPR standard after the IEEE 802.17 working group began to refine a draft during a meeting last week in St. Louis.

Specifically, the group started the comment-resolution process for the RPR draft standard, whereby changes or additions to the standard are submitted through technical and editorial comments. That process is expected to continue through July, and to give the working group what it needs to prepare a draft standard for balloting. The working group is slated to meet again in May in Ottawa to continue refining the standard, the RPR Alliance said.

RPR is designed to support carrier-class voice services as well as packet-based services and applications. A layer two technology, RPR is designed to co-exist with legacy Sonet and Ethernet physical layers.

Cox Communications is among MSOs that are taking a close look at the technology, and is deploying a pre-standards version of it in Lafayette, La., using Scientific-Atlanta's Prisma IP platform, which is repackaged via a partnership with Luminous Networks.